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\f0\b\fs24 \cf0 It\'92s Official: 2014 Was the Hottest Year
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by Joby Warrick and Chris Mooney\
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\cf0 Jan. 16, 2015 \'96 Planet Earth set an ominous record last year, as global temperatures rose to the highest level since modern measurements began, scientists said Friday, in a report that heightened concerns about humanity\'92s growing toll on the natural systems that sustain life.\
The year 2014 was declared the hottest year in a joint announcement by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, based on separate analyses of weather records dating back to 1880, when Rutherford B. Hayes occupied the White House.\
Driven in part by steadily warming oceans, average temperatures edged past the previous records set in 2005 and 2010. The 10 hottest years in modern times have all come since 1997, NASA scientists said.\
\'93This is the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades,\'94 said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA\'92s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. While fluctuations are possible in any given year, in a system as chaotic as weather, Schmidt said, \'93the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases.\'94\
The grim milestone was recorded in a year when large portions of the American West baked under epic droughts and heat waves, and glaciers and Arctic ice sheets continued a decades-long retreat. Historic droughts threatened drinking-water supplies across large swaths of Brazil and Australia, while thawing Arctic tundra opened up vast sinkholes in parts of Siberia and northern Canada.\
In one of the rare exceptions to the warming trend, 2014 was cooler than average in the eastern United States, as an unusual dip in the Jet Stream sent waves of Arctic air plunging southward. Eastern U.S. states were among the coolest areas of the world, compared with seasonal temperature norms.\
But while Americans were shivering, the rest of the world experienced record warmth in 7 of 12 months in 2014 \'97 including December \'97 a NOAA analysis found.\
Most surprising about the new record was the fact that it appeared in a year that did not witness an El Ni\'f1o, the warm-weather pattern associated with unusually high ocean temperatures in the east-central Pacific, NOAA and NASA scientists said. \'93This is the 1st year since 1997 that the record warmest year was not an El Ni\'f1o year at the beginning of the year, because the last 3 have been,\'94 Schmidt said.\
The data reviewed by the U.S. agencies confirmed that much of 2014\'92s warming was driven by the oceans, the planet\'92s great repository of heat. Ocean temperatures were more than 1\'b0C above average, reaching the highest levels ever recorded, NOAA said. Land temperatures weren\'92t quite record-setting, but still ranked 4th-warmest since the start of the data set in 1880. California, much of Europe, including the United Kingdom, and parts of Australia all experienced their warmest years.\
Climate scientists said the streak of hot years was further evidence of human-induced warming caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. While the Earth\'92s climate has warmed and cooled throughout history, the recent warming correlates with sharply rising levels of heat-trapping CO
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\fs24 in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, scientists say.\
\'93The temperature record is yet another brick in the massive wall of evidence that the climate is warming due to human activity,\'94 said Simon Donner, associate professor of climatology at the University of British Columbia. \'93Of the 20 warmest years in recorded history, 19 happened in the past 2 decades. Our entire idea of \'91normal\'92 is changing.\'94\
The widely anticipated finding deflated \'97 but did not fully dispel \'97 a perception that the rate of warming has slowed since the 1990s. Several scientists noted that 2014 was not a blowout, statistically speaking. The year surpassed the next runners-up by only a few 0.01\'b0C, averaged across the globe. Some also noted that rising temperatures have not kept pace with computer simulations that predicted even faster warming, given the 40% rise in CO
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\fs24 levels in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution.\
\'93With 2014 essentially tied with 2005 and 2010 for hottest year, this implies that there has been essentially no trend in warming over the past decade,\'94 said Judith Curry, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. \'93This \'91almost\'92 record year does not help the growing discrepancy between the climate model projections and the surface temperature observations.\'94\
But other scientists said the spate of record-setting years should put to rest the notion of a global-warming \'93pause.\'94\
\'93Viewed in context, the record 2014 temperatures underscore the undeniable fact that we are witnessing, before our eyes, the effects of human-caused climate change,\'94 said Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology at Penn State University. \'93It is exceptionally unlikely that we would be seeing a record year \'97 during a record warm decade, during a multi-decadal period of warmth that appears to be unrivaled over at least the past millennium \'97 if it were not for the rising levels of planet-warming gases produced by fossil fuel burning.\'94\
The joint announcement by NOAA and NASA followed a careful, collaborative effort in which experts closely compared analyses. Last year, NASA and NOAA also worked together on an analysis of 2013, which ranks within the top-10 hottest years on record.\
The new findings are also consistent with an earlier, preliminary analysis by the Japan Meteorological Agency, which pronounced 2014 the hottest year in its records, which go back to 1891. Another analysis, based on satellite temperature recordings of the lower atmosphere or \'93troposphere,\'94 conducted at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, found that 2014 was only the 3rd-warmest year for this part of the planet. Still another leading agency that keeps temperature records, Britain\'92s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, has not yet released its 2014 results.\
However, the joint NASA and NOAA statement will likely carry considerable force, in a year in which world leaders will gather in Paris to negotiate a new global agreement to ratchet down GHG emissions.\
Secretary of State John F. Kerry seized on the report in calling for \'93ambitious, concrete action\'94 to address the causing of climate change. \'93This report is just another sound in a steady drumbeat that is growing increasingly more urgent,\'94 Kerry said in a statement. \'93So the question isn\'92t the science. The question isn\'92t the warning signs. The question is when and how the world will respond.\'94\
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\cf0 www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/its-official-2014-was-the-hottest-year/2015/01/16/e207b8ee-9db8-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html?hpid=z5\
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\cf0 [Global land surface temperatures for the 1st 6 months of 2014 were the 5th warmest on record, while the 2nd 6 months were the warmest. Global sea surface temperatures for the 1st 6 months of 2014 were 4th warmest on record, while the 2nd 6 months were the warmest. Combined (70% sea, 30% land), the 1st 6 months of 2014 were 4th warmest on record, while the 2nd 6 months were the warmest on record.\
For the year as a whole, the land surface was the 3rd warmest on record, the sea surface easily the warmest, and the combination substantially the warmest.]\
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\cf0 data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/}